Vision or Threat—Awareness for Dual-Use in the Development of Autonomous Driving

Abstract

In the digital age, the vision of autonomous vehicles (AVs) is vibrant. Research is being conducted worldwide to integrate AVs into our everyday lives in the future, spending considerable amounts of money in the development process. Actors from both engineering as well as social sciences are involved in this research, with technical disciplines strongly dominating. In addition to perceived progress of numerous newly developed technologies such as AVs, challenges should also be referred to. According to research analysis, the transferability of autonomous cars to the military sphere seems to be frequently forgotten or ignored (dual-use). Since not much research has been conducted in Germany on the potential deployment of autonomous driving development steps into military domains, 25 semistructured interviews with developers and researchers and actors involved in the field, were conducted in 2020. This article identifies that the majority of respondents interviewed were aware of general existing dual-use debates; however, few had reflected about dual-use issues regarding a possible transfer of their own development processes in the context of autonomous driving to military applications, intensively. One reason is the small-scale nature of research, another is the complexity of the field, which enables the engineer’s alienation from their responsibility for the artefacts’ use. Moreover, it has become clear that hardly any conversations among colleagues occur about possible misuse and that no standardized policy guidelines exist, which provide information about possible risk. To raise dual-use awareness, scientific contributions, risk education, and interdisciplinary discussions are essential.